Prerequisites

Prerequisites

While our R scripting will be at a fairly basic level, you should have some familiarity with R in order to succeed in this course as it will be challenging to learn R and text analysis at the same time. A basic knowledge of statistics would also be helpful.

FAQs

FAQs

How is the course organized?

The course is organized into a set of four interactive learning modules, and you should work through the modules sequentially. The modules contain a number of topic pages, each including a video to walk you through the concept and interactive text to reinforce what was covered in the video, quick questions and knowledge checks.

What other types of activities does the course include?

There are three additional types of activity throughout the course to facilitate deeper learning:

Match: These activities require you to have a go at a task offline, then select the correct solution

Guided: These are multi-part match activities so you do a part of the task then submit your solution, which unlocks feedback on your attempt and the next part of the task

Structured: This is a more complex offline task and to see the Tutor’s solution you need to share your attempt at the task and your reasoning. You also get to see other participants' attempts and are encouraged to engage in discussion. The Tutor will then share further feedback

The vast majority of topics in the course are fundamentally practical. You are strongly encouraged to recreate and run the code as you work through them, and complete knowledge checks and activities.

How long will I have access to the course for?

You will have 3 months' access to this course.

We recommend completing the course in the first 4 weeks, during which you will have access to learning support provided by Nicole, your subject matter expert (SME). She will be on hand to answer any questions, or help you if you get stuck.

After the learning support period, you’ll still have access to the course materials but you won’t receive support from the SME and if there is a course forum, you will not be able to ask any questions. SAGE Campus will help you with any IT or platform issues you might have throughout the course.

What software do I need for this course?

You will need to have R installed to work through this course and it is essential that your version is 3.4.1 or above.

You will need to install the quanteda package and the quantedaData package. Quanteda can be downloaded from CRAN and should be version 9.9.6.5 or above. The quantedaData package can't be installed from CRAN and you will need to install the devtools package from CRAN and then install quantedaData from github. You can use the code below to do this.

You should also install the readtext package from CRAN as we will be using that to read text files into R.

install.packages("readtext")

Do I need to buy any of this software?

No they are either open source or have community (free) versions

What do I need to participate on this course?

A computer or laptop with the suggested software and a modern browser e.g. Internet Explorer 10+ or the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox.

Can I do this course on my mobile device?

While you can access the course on your mobile device, go through the content and answer questions, you will need a desktop or laptop computer to practice and complete the activities that require you to write and/or test code.

Settings

Settings

Jonathan Slapin is Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex and Director of the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis.

He joined Essex in 2015, having previously held faculty positions at the University of Houston, Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles and a BA from Rutgers University.

His main research and teaching interests are in quantitative comparative politics, political institutions, and quantitative text analysis. His research frequently employs formal theory and quantitative methods to explore legislative behaviour, political parties, and democratic representation.

His most recent book, co-authored with Sven-Oliver Proksch, is entitled “The Politics of Parliamentary Debate: Parties, Rebels and Representation” and is published by Cambridge University Press.

Other research has appeared in leading political science journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, and the British Journal of Political Science.

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